I’m here at the Samsung press conference at CES where Samsung is about to give us the scoop on their tech dominance. They’ve sold 300 Million Galaxy devices, they sell a TV every 2 seconds, they’ve got the #1 Refrigerator for the 3rd straight year, and they’re about to show us “the future of consumer electronics”. Let’s see what they got.

They’re focusing on connecting all the various devices that Samsung produces… with the television at the heart. Smart Interaction, Smart Content, Smart Evolution.

Samsung is introducing what they call an “Evolution Kit” which allows you to update your TV every year, improving speed and performance. The first TV they’ve announced at CES is the ES8000 with a super slim bezel and dual-core processor, U-shaped stand, and front-facing camera in units that go up to 72-inches.

Look at the size of the screen compared to the border… pretty sick!

Back to “Smart Evolution”… in 2012, Samsung TVs will have special “slots” with chips in them that help power the TV. With each passing year, Samsung Smart TV owners will be able to update their TV by inserting a new card that Sammy ships out. Details were sparse but we’re told they’re coming soon. Samsung also announced interesting updates to Media Hub and File Sharing/Syncing through their televisions, but nothing head-turning.

Zip past Smart Cameras and Smart Appliances and we see what many people have been waiting for… the Samsung Galaxy Note which we saw announced this morning. The Galaxy Note is a 5.6-inch Android device with 4G LTE connectivity headed to AT&T in the coming months. It comes with an S-Pen that allows in-app annotations and screen grabs, extending functionality across the board. Imagine opening up Google Maps to a location, jotting down a note with your S-Pen, doing a screen grab, and SMSing over to a friend. Love the idea. Great stuff.

Another Android device which Samsung openly announced prior to their press conference was the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7:

I’m not sure why all these companies insist on preemptively posting press releases prior to their actual press conference? But nonetheless… it’s their show, we should let them run it! After following up with the announcement of the Samsung Series 9 Notebook, they turned on the lights and let us evacuate to catch the other 10 million events required by our schedule.

I’m a bit disappointed, but understandingly so… I think Mobile World Congress in Barcelona will prove a bit more exciting for Samsung. As one of the dominant manufacturers, you get the sense they’re holding back a bit at CES, waiting for the perfect moment to unleash the next wave of exclusiveness. Regardless, we’ll be headed to Samsung’s CES booth to get our mittens on the Note and Tab 7.7, reporting back with our opinions.

A bit underwhelmed by Samsung’s announcements as well. MWC should be more interesting.

So now 3 downsides to getting the Note vs waiting for Note 2 or a SGS3:
1) the hardware buttons. they’re probably going away for the Note 2 shipping with ICS, which’ll make the device a bit smaller after the bezel is shrunk.
2) the display. Dark greys are crushed black (not a smooth gradient – google it). Note 2 may have a non-pentile samoled display. Also, maybe they’ll go with 1280×720 vs 1280×800 to make it a bit skinnier?
3) Qualcomm+LTE vs Exynos w/o LTE. LTE isn’t worth it for most of us with datacaps. It eats through datacaps AND battery faster. Would rather have Exynos (EVEN if exynos wasn’t faster, and it is – barely).

dara_parsavand

1) Agree totally – let’s get rid of all the buttons on the front of phones and make the screen fill as much of the form factor as possible. I’d like to see 4 mm side and 10 mm top and bottom bezels.

2) I wasn’t aware of a black crush problem with the Note. I’ve read a lot of complaints about green tint possibly due to pentile, but I couldn’t only find a few references to black crush – why is this pentile related – do the AMOLED + screens not exhibit black crush under the same circumstances it is seen in AMOLED screens? I hope they keep 1280×800, a very nice aspect ratio – pleasing to the eye and more room for a portrait on screen keyboard. I’m only rarely going to watch 720p video so I don’t want my screen chosen based on that constraint.

3) Agree again – I don’t get the LTE craze, 3G works fine for me until they get a whole lot more LTE bugs out and optimization completed. Battery usage should be equivalent on LTE vs 3G (a constant overhead usage + a usage proportional to number of bits downloaded) before I’m interested.